Hot answers tagged abnormal-psychology
8
Depends which IQ test you use - individuals with ASDs show a typical "pattern" on the WAIS, which can cause it to appear like they have lower IQs. When tested with tests which aren't biased in this way, they appear to have the same IQ range as neurotypicals.
The assumption that those with an ASD are cognitively impaired pervades both popular and scientific ...
7
I am by no means any sort of expert at the French mental health system, but I was curious and found a few reasons that may indicate why such a philosophy is prevalent.
In this blog, an American psychologist analyzes the differences between the American and French schools of thought on ADHD, but the observations hold for other conditions as well. While ...
7
Before trying to give any sort of answer, it is important to address a common misconception. In popular culture, the terms child-molester and pedophile are often equated. Scientifically, they are not at all the same. The approximate scientific definition for a pedophile is:
an individual that has an unwavering sexual attraction to prepubescent children ...
6
In general, no. People with excellent memories can just as easily misapply the availability heuristic as people with poor memories.
To see why, consider a situation where a reasoner is asked to estimate the relative frequency of murder and suicide. Because examples of murder or more "available" (i.e., more easily recalled) than examples of suicide, the ...
6
This is only one possible pathway. There are many potential ones. Further the fact that this is possible does not mean that it is the case always.
Stress activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. For example, a meta-analysis by Dickerson et al. (2004) demonstrated that an acute laboratory based stressor reliably increased cortisol levels, ...
6
I believe 'psychosomatic' describes a way the mind has effects on the your body which might result in somatic symptoms. Often psychosomatic disorders are diagnosed as such when:
no somatic correlate to the experienced symptoms can be found
somatic correlates do not sufficiently explain the experienced symptoms
This often results in patients who visit ...
4
I think the difference comes down to awareness and control. A person who "wears many hats" and can step into different archetypes is a sort of personality chameleon, whereas a person with dissociative identity disorder has little or no control over changing personalities, and certain personalities within that person may be only partially or completely ...
4
Dissociative Disorders are really fascinating to me as well. Fugue states/episodes as well as dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) in particular.
PTSD must be differentiated from disorders that can exhibit phenomenological similarities, such as borderline personality disorder and dissociative disorders (including dissociative ...
4
I don't know if you can completely remove the selection bias from such a sample.
You seem to be referring (in some sense, at least) to regression towards the mean. This is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) problem with much research on clinical samples.
What I would do (assuming resources) would be to take the same size (or larger) sample from the ...
4
Yes, phobias appear to be partly hereditary. This encompasses both genetic and environmental factors.
Kendler et al. (1999) review some work in this area:
We have previously reported, from a population-based sample of female twins, that the liability
to agoraphobia, social phobia and animal
phobia was modestly infuenced by genetic
factors with ...
3
I had a read through the Pronin and Wegner study.
The study had a sample size of 144. They manipulated thought speed by getting participants to read aloud one statement after another at either half normal reading speed (slow thinking) or double normal reading speed (fast thinking). They also manipulated the content of the text being read (depressing ...
2
Note, this is not my area, and not medical advice. If you need help with this you should consult an appropriately trained health practitioner.
To consult the scientific literature, do a search like "schizoaffective disorder prognosis" on Google Scholar.
For example, Robinson et al (1999) provide some relevant empirical data. The sample was 50% female and ...
2
Clinical Case Studies is a journal devoted to the write up of case studies. To quote the site:
It presents cases involving individual, couples, and family therapy.
The easy-to-follow case presentation format allows you to learn how
interesting and challenging cases were assessed and conceptualized,
and how treatment followed such ...
2
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but here are a few major academic journals on neuropsychology and neurology (in no particular order):
Neuropsychology
Cognitive Neuropsychology
NeuroCase
Developmental Neuropsychology
Cortex
2
"Their lives are perfectly fine" is a hard to test thing. Hard to compare. How people feel and respond is deeply contextual.
However there are several potential reasons:
They may be 'wired' to feel stress or respond emotionally (i.e. Due to the way their brain has developed).
A feeling of not being in control (This is often hard to perceive from outside ...
2
Whew, OK. I am going to take a crack at this. The question asks about depression diagnoses, so I will interpret and focus on that accordingly. I think we can all agree that making any clear distinction between endogenous and exogenous causes of depression is difficult, since 1) liken to the Nature vs. Nurture question, people generally agree that Major ...
2
The cardinal diagnostic trait of "multiple personalities," or dissociative identity disorder (DID), is dissociative states. Following Putnam (1991), dissociation can be defined as follows:
Dissociation is a process that produces a discernible alteration in a person's thoughts, feelings or actions so that for a period of time certain information is not ...
2
I think the answer can actually be found in the Dictionary.com link you cite:
-ological; suffix;
used to form adjectives; belonging or relating to a particular type of scientific study;
e.g. biological, technological
And (taken from Wikipedia):
The word pathology is from Ancient Greek πάθος, pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and -λογία, -logia, ...
2
You could take the AQ Test, which is based on the Autism Spectrum Quotient. It was published by the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University. It doesn't give you a diagnosis, but rather suggests that some have more autistic traits based on their score. It measures autistic tendencies other than ones that would be considered a disorder, like most in the ...
1
Look up Jeffery Schwartz. He has done decades worth of scientific studies with hundreds of OCD patients. In his book "You Are Not Your Brain" (worth a read) he mentions this bad brain wiring or cognitive deficits are the culprit behind the "Deceptive Brain Messages (OCD).
His studies show that self directed neuro-plasticity make the most corrections in ...
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